In the days preceding India’s Independence on August 15, 1947, the Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, had come close to buying the port of Marmagoa from Portugal, according to documents accessed recently at the British Library in London.
The documents were accessed by a team led by Uday Nagaraju, involved in compiling the history of Telangana for Telangana Jagruthi, an NGO run by Member of Parliament K. Kavitha. The researchers looked at over 10,000 documents, some of them classified ‘Top Secret’ by the Commonwealth Relations Office.
The documents related to Telangana and Hyderabad came into the public domain under the ‘thirty years rule' which allows declassification after 30 years. These documents became available in India last week when the team brought the copies to Hyderabad.
British middleman
While the Nizam's interest in purchase of a Goan port is known, the documents, for the first time, shed light on how close the two parties had actually been to striking a deal. The go-between, a Britisher, Sir Alexander Roger, pocketed £17,000 for his efforts at brokering the deal.
“The Portuguese government had in fact entered into negotiations with the agent for Hyderabad and a draft agreement had gone to Lisbon for approval by the Portuguese Government... it was made clear to the Portuguese Embassy that it suited H.M.G. (His Majesty’s Government) very well to be without cognisance of these negotiations,” these words from a secret Foreign Office document in the British Library, dated April 15, 1948, shows how British diplomacy worked in early days of Independent India. This was barely six months before Hyderabad was amalgamated into India.
“We were surprised to find these secret documents,” says Mr. Nagaraju, U.K. Adviser to Telangana Jagruthi. One document cites a private letter from the British Viceroy (Lord Mountbatten) in October 1945 about Hyderabad’s effort to buy Goa.
The Nizam’s Dominion, then spread over 2,15,339 square km, extended right up to Gadag in the present day Karnataka. Marmagoa port lay another 100 miles to the west and would have given sea access to the landlocked Nizam’s province.
For two years nothing was heard of the idea till May 1947, when the British heard from Sir Alexander Roger about the deal being on track. Sir Alexander, a British industrialist with extensive business interests in Portugal, headed the Anglo-Portugal Telephone Company; he inveigled himself into a position to facilitate the negotiations. He received £7,000 on March 27, 1947 and another £10,000 on August 26, 1947 from the Nizam. Adjusted for inflation it would be worth £625,658 at current rates. The two payments were made into Sir Roger’s account in the Imperial Bank of India, London.
By June 1947, a draft agreement for the sale was ready: “The Government of the Portuguese Republic and the Government of the Nizam being desirous of regulating traffic in the port and railway of Marmagoa in Portuguese India, and territories have resolved to enter into a convention for that purpose,” the agreement read.
Though couched in the language of a business transaction, its implications on sovereignty are made clear in one of the clauses: “Portugal would not extend to other countries similar facilities without Hyderabad’s consent.”
Goa was a Portuguese enclave from 1510 and Portugal wanted to keep its sovereignty. The Nizam of Hyderabad realised his would be a landlocked state after Indian Independence and began searching for a sea opening.
The British had treaties and pacts going back hundreds of years to help protect both Portuguese Goa as well as Nizam’s Hyderabad which was about to be disregarded. It was in this backdrop that Alexander Roger tried to come up with a treaty to benefit Goa, Hyderabad and himself.
Even after India became Independent, Sir Alexander tried to persuade the Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio de Oliviera Salazar to go ahead with the deal with the Nizam. According to a research paper in the Journal of Indian History (1975), Salazar described Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru “a susceptible and mistrusting politician.” He expressed his worry about “Nehru following a continuous policy of absorption and incorporation of small states of Hindustan.”
Standstill Agreement
The Nizam’s advisors became entangled with more pressing concerns such as the Standstill Agreement after India’s Independence. The Nizam refused to join either India or Pakistan citing earlier treaties signed with the British. As a temporary measure, the Nizam’s advisors led by Sir Walter Monckton negotiated a Standstill Agreement before permanent measures could be found. As relations between India and Nizam’s government became increasingly tense with accusations and counter accusations about raids and communal violence, the move to acquire Marmagoa Port petered out.
Soon the goose was cooked for the Nizam as the Indian Army marched in on September 17, 1948, in what was euphemistically called Police Action or Operation Polo to amalgamate Hyderabad into India. Major General J.N. Chaudhuri led the Indian army as it marched in on four fronts into the State, with the major thrust coming from Sholapur. The Nizam’s army capitulated in 100 hours.
Goa was annexed to the Indian union only in 1961 in an armed action called Operation Vijay. Significantly, it was also led by J. N. Chaudhuri, now Lt.-Gen. and G.O.C.-in-C. Southern Command at Pune, who received orders on October 7, 1961 to plan and execute the Army action in Goa. The plan was successfully implemented between December 17 and 19, 1961.
